Spike Lee: "Chance The Rapper’s A Fraud”

During a talk at Northwestern University last week, Spike Lee dissed Chance The Rapper.

"Chance the Rapper’s a fraud," Lee said, according to North by NORTHWESTERN. "Straight-up fraud. He puts himself up as a speaker of the people, but that means you have to put truths that you see. That doesn’t mean you can pick and choose what you talk about.”

Chance The Rapper, whose father is the deputy chief of staff and director for Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s office of public engagement, has been critical of Chi-Raq, the 2015 film that Lee directed and co-wrote. The film is "A modern day adaptation of the ancient Greek play Lysistrata by Aristophanes, set against the backdrop of gang violence in Chicago,” according to IMDB. In the film, the female characters enact a sex strike in order to try to curb violence in the city.

Chance The Rapper said during a December interview that Lee exploited Chicago for his own gain.

"He got his little $15 million from Amazon and his other little bread from Lionsgate and made a movie that was not about Chicago but manipulated and used Chicago actors and Chicago scenery to push this movie," the rapper said at the time. “It was an oversimplification of a bigger problem. He wasn't really focusing on the issues of Chicago, it wasn't really about Chicago. To me, it was about this age-old conversation of Black-on-Black violence, which is to me some Bill Cosby ‘pull up your pants’ stuff. I’m just not for it.”